Plan B

The plan was clean. CF Moto race at TCS at ten, leave by eleven, Merei Racing Park for the Tenere test ride event, then the afternoon in the hills around Buzău. The race was delayed two hours. Rain from the days before. That kind of news lands harder than it should. You're already there, already switched on, and then the day reorganises itself without asking. The excitement doesn't leave all at once — it just quietly steps back. We watched the race but left before it finished. That says something about where our heads were. Merei was forty minutes away. We arrived with low expectations and were met by Cristian Drăgan — certified BMW Motorrad off-road instructor, someone we'd crossed paths with at the previous Tenere event and stayed in contact with since. He saw us pull in and something shifted in his expression. Not surprise — recognition. The kind that happens when the day's programme unexpectedly includes people you can actually ride with. He didn't know our morning had gone sideways. He just did his job — read where we were, put us on the right bikes, ran us through something tailored enough to feel personal. By the end of it our arms were pumped and the morning had stopped mattering. We left the track and followed a GPX someone had built for the area. Twenty-five kilometres. Rocky technical sections, single track, fast open stretches, viewpoints, a technical downhill, a river crossing that made us think twice. The kind of route that has no filler — every section asks something different. Short enough to underestimate. Long enough to earn. We finished the day better than we'd planned to start it. That doesn't happen because of the plan. It happens because you stay when the plan changes and see what the day becomes.